Teamwork keeps Spahtens group honest during grueling workouts

LYNN – It was a cold, rainy spring day in Lynn Woods Reservation, and the constant movement in the wet climate had earned me blisters on my feet. I was vaguely aware that there could be ticks making a meal on various parts of my body.I was also holding an ax. It was 6:30 a.m.For the last four weeks, I traded Saturday night drinks for 4:30 a.m. wake-ups to find out why a group of people were training in Lynn Woods for about five hours every Sunday morning.Lynn resident Keith Glass said the idea came out the simple wish of he and a few others to train in the woods for his upcoming Death Race, a days-long, obstacle race endurance challenge.?After the Lynn Woods trail runs, we would stay until 11 p.m. working out, doing push-ups and ending with beers,” said Glass. “With the winter Death Race coming up, we said, ?Yeah, let?s keep training! We?ll meet in Lynn Woods at, like, 5 a.m.!?”Soon after, the group was asked to become affiliated with the New England Spahtens, an organized bunch of obstacle course racing (OCR) enthusiasts about 750 members strong. The heavy-rucking, wood-chopping, burpee-enthusiast Stone Tower Spahtens were born.With a core group of about 10, the Spahtens welcome everyone and anyone with 156 members in their Facebook group, where they communicate with each other daily about that week?s workout. With no commitment and a start-and-end time policy of “free to come and go as you please,” some Sundays there are 20 and sometimes there are two. Some of the people I met every Sunday from Dracut, Melrose, Essex and even New Hampshire put my early wake-up and 20-minute drive to shame. Ages and fitness backgrounds are a wide range, with most around age 40 and Glass?s OCR protege and son, William, age 9, dragging down the average.?I was just us for a while, then we let people know about it and others would join in,” said Glass.Spahtens, their spelling based on the distinctly New England pronunciation of “Spartans,” are an all-inclusive bunch, who will show rookies the ropes and then show them how to climb a wall with them. The camaraderie is so infectious that before you can say “I?ve never flipped a tire,” you?ve got your hands on the rubber. And, after all, how could you not roll a 12-foot log up a half mile incline without your teammates and the more-than-occasional dirty joke?Even being sensitive to first-timers, the Spahtens dedication to fitness isn?t for the faint of heart. The first day I met Glass, he had just come from a night hike at Wachusett Mountain, then drove to meet his group at 6:30 a.m. Four hours later, he met a friend to run through a local obstacle course.James Miscz, a Beverly resident who runs a majority of the group?s workouts, recalled some of the training done when the Spahtens started in the winter.?We were walking up to the tower with frost on our nose and eyelashes,” he said. Miscz is just one of the Spahtens who is registered to compete in multiple OCR events like The Spartan Race almost every weekend during the summer.If you ask a Spahten, as I had, why they return to the woods each Sunday morning, giving up Saturday night parties and the ability to move on Monday, they will simply laugh, shrug, and reply, “I don?t know, it?s fun,” before running back into the woods to find a log to carry.But after spending four weeks among them, I found that there was more to that shrug than a pair of well-muscled shoulders. Miscz loves the challenge of the obstacle races, but uses the training to complement his preparation to become an air rescuer with the U.S. Navy.Jason Buggy fought a bum knee all the way to the Tough Mudder starting line on June 1, which he credited training for with the help of the Spahtens. A week before the race, Buggy was already setting new goals to get back to the record timed mile he set in his school days as a football player in 1989.Marc Ford was still sidelined from heavy-lifting after a surgery when I began training with the Spahtens, but he showed up every morning I was the